Shanghai Tournament

Nervous to get to the airport, I was about 15 minutes away from the hotel when I realized I'd forgotten my orthodics. That would've made the weekend much more difficult...I made it to Dongzhimen and managed to ask a woman where to get my ticket for the airport shuttle. I actually understood her response of "The newspaper stand over there" and successfully made it to the airport an hour before my flight. However, Chinese security check is really intense, and I ended up having to check my Ultimate bag after they smelled (yes...smelled) every single one of my toiletries. (Apparently conditioner and lotion are fine, but not shampoo, hairspray, or sunblock...)
When I arrived in Shanghai, I turned on my phone to receive a text in Chinese saying "Welcome to Shanghai" among other things I couldn't understand. I called Candice, one of the other Ultimate players, to meet up with her, and seeing as I didn't know the area (and assumed she did) ended up taking an unfortunately long and expensive (1.5 hours and 160 kuai/$25) cab ride to meet them. We made a delicious pasta dinner in Candice's dad's apartment before heading over to the hotel and registration party.
I have never been to an Ultimate tournament with so many parties before. The scheduled events for the weekend included in our 500 kuai/$73 tournament fee consisted of:
Friday: Registration party
Saturday: Games, lunch, games, dinner/20 kegs, tournament party (included two free drinks)
Sunday: Games, lunch/15 kegs
There was also a Sunday dinner/party and a Monday party, but we all left before those. Also included in the tournament fee was a disc, bottle opener, towel, key chain light, and all the information for everything. Mind you, this tournament fee was extremely expensive as far as the Asian Ultimate world goes.
A note on the differences between Shanghai and Beijing: Everyone in Shanghai speaks English because it is full of ex-pats, and so many Americans live there. There are all sorts of American extablishments everywhere including Starbucks, Papa Johns, and even a Specialized bike store. It's a very interesting contrast to Beijing where almost noone speaks English, and if you go into a restaurant without any Chinese knowledge, you won't be able to order.
Back to the tournament: There were teams at the tournament from Shanghai, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Singapore and a bunch of other Chinese cities. It was amazing to have the only real common language between everyone be the sport of Ultimate. I played on Beijing's B team (BeiBling for this tournament), and we did really well, winning 4 of 6 games. We were definitely the best B team there. The weather on Saturday morning was a miserable 95% humidity and about 95 degrees, but we somehow survived. A bunch of teams brought with them some form of alcohol native to their country or some snacks, which were shared between teams at the end of games.
The theme for the tournament party was "conspiracy". Our team dressed as Monopoly, each of us being a different space on the board, and one person was Mr. Moneybags. He handed out money to buy properties. The property cards had been adjusted to read things like "with one house: sip of beer, with two houses: chug beer, etc..." The goal of the game was to get everyone else drunk (i.e. making it harder for them to play the next day). Other teams were dressed as black and white spies, Julius Caesar, etc... It was a lot of fun, and once again just kinda awesome to walk around (and have about 7 drinks for free!)
On Sunday, we got to watch the championship game between the Philippines and Shanghai (our A team got knocked out in the semi-finals). This was probably the best game of Ultimate I've ever watched, and the women on the Philippines team are AMAZING. I could never ever dream of being as good as they are. Unfortunately, Shanghair won though the Philippines team was clearly better. The final score was 15-12, but prior to it being 13-12, Philippines had been winning the entire game.
After enjoying some delicious Papa Johns, we all hopped in some (less expensive) cabs to the airport and flew back to Beijing. Just to top off the weekend, I poetically finished reading Ender's Game just as my bag arrived on the baggage claim. I got back to my room exhausted, sun burnt, sore, bug-bitten, and somewhat hungover at 1:30am Monday morning and couldn't bring myself to shower before going to sleep...